Phil! Gold :: Video_Games : FFXI

Mon, 07 Mar 2005

Skillchains

There are so many descriptions of skillchains in Final Fantasy XI, and
none of them really made sense to me for the longest time. Through the
help of a
skillchain
discussion and two
skillchaincharts, I finally
made sense of it all. This is an explanation of that understanding;
hopefully others will benefit from it.

Skillchains are the result of doing weapon skills in a particular order,
with precise timing. They unleash a significant amount of additional
damage. [There appear to be rough calculations on how much, but I can't
find reliable numbers.] There are three levels of skillchains--the higher
levels do more damage. Every skillchain has at least one elemental
component--if a mage casts an elementally-appropriate spell at the same
time that the skillchain occurs, you also get a magic burst for more
additional damage.

Let's start with level 1 skillchains. There are eight types of level 1
skillchains: Transfixion, Liquefaction, Impaction, Detonation,
Compression, Scission, Reverberation, and Induration. I don't beleve that
there's anything inherent in most of those names; they're just what
they're called. Almost every weaponskill has at least one of those types
as an attribute. There are certain pairings of attributes that will
create a skillchain. See the chart at right for a graphical layout. From
that chart, you can see that, for example, Impaction leads to
Liquefaction. Thus, you can create a level one skillchain by chaining
together, say, Flat Blade and Burning Blade, in that order. The
skillchain created is named after the attributes of the final weaponskill,
so this example would make a Liquefaction skillchain.

The items in the graph are also color coded to indicate their elemental
attributes: Transfixion is Light, Liquefaction is Fire, Impaction is
Lightning, Detonation is Wind, Compression is Dark, Scission is Earth,
Reverberation is Water, and Induration is Ice. The above example is
Liquefaction, so you could magic burst with any Fire spell.

Finally, some weaponskills have multiple skillchain attributes. For each
skill there's an order of priority. An example is Spinning Axe, which
has, in order, Liquefaction, Scission, and Impaction. If you have two
weaponskills with multiple attributes, the first skillchain's priorities
are more important. Let's chain Spinning Axe with Shadow of Death, which
is Induration and Reverberation. The first priorities of each weaponskill
are checked first, but there's no Liquefaction -> Induration
skillchain. So the game goes down the list of the second weaponskill,
trying Liquefaction -> Reverberation. Nothing. Now it goes to
Scission on Spinning Axe and starts over with Shadow of Death, checking
Induration. There are no Scission -> Induration chains, so it next
checks Scission -> Reverberation. That is valid, so the two will form
a Reverberation skillchain.

Skillchains themselves can be chained. You can go Scission ->
Reverberation -> Induration, which will make a Reverberation skillchain
followed by an Induration skillchain. When you do this, the damage
multipliers are higher; the Induration skillchain would do more damage
than if it had been created separately.

That covers level 1 skillchains, and is really most of the hard stuff.
Now we go on to level 2.

Level 2 skillchains are more powerful than level 1 skillchains. In
addition, each level 2 skillchain has two elemental attributes; you can
magic burst with either of those elements. The level 2 skillchains are:
Distortion (Water and Ice), Fusion (Fire and Light), Fragmentation
(Lightning and Wind), and Gravitation (Darkness and Earth). You can see
the paths to make level 2 skillchains in the graph on the right. Since
the graph is not entirely clear, let me clarify a bit. Certain
combinations of level 1 skillchain attributes will make a level 2
skillchain: Liquefaction -> Impaction creates a Fusion skillchain.
Also, some of the highest-level weaponskills have level 2 attributes;
Swift Blade, for example, has Gravitation. You can put together level 2
attribute to make a level 2 skillchain in a manner analogous to the level
1 skillchains. Fusion -> Gravitation will make a Gravitation
skillchain.

As with the level 1s, you can hook together multiple level 2 skillchains.
You can do things like Liquefaction -> Impaction -> Gravitation,
which will make a Fusion skillchain followed by a Gravitation skillchain.

Finally, there are the level 3 skillchains. There are only two of these,
and each has four elemental attributes. Light skillchains are Light,
Fire, Lightning, and Wind, while Dark skillchains are Darkness, Earth,
Water, and Ice. Level 3 skillchains can only be made by putting together
two level 2 attributes, as illustrated by the chart on the right. Note
that these are essentially pairings; the same two level 2 attributes will
give the same results regardless of the order in which they are executed.
Since at least one of the weaponskills in a level 3 skillchain must have a
level 2 attribute, these are restricted to the highest-level characters in
the game. The earliest that these weaponskills come available is at level
65, and some classes don't get them until 67 or so.

The usual rules of chaining apply; you can make, for example, a light
skillchain with the sequence Liquefaction -> Impaction ->
Fragmentation, which will first make a Fusion skillchain followed by a
Dark skillchain.

Insofar as anyone knows, there are no level 4 skillchains. Following the
logic from lower levels, there would only be one level 4 skillchain, and
it would have all elemental attributes. It would be made by putting
together a Dark type and a Light type weaponskill (possibly in the other
order). It would require weaponskills that had Dark and Light type
attributes, which none seem to. In short, not only do they not exist, as
far as anyone can tell, they cannot exist in the game as it
currently is.

For your edification, here's a full chart of the links to form the various
skillchains:

I don't know of any complete, up-to-date list in English of weapon skills
and their skillchain attributes.